Is it any accident that some of the world’s best-selling authors are men with hard names? King. Would he ever have become King if he had a name like Shayne? Only if his first name was Mike. And don’t forget Koontz, Clancy, Cook.

I thought a lot about using a pseudonym, something hard like Cole Black that would immediately proclaim, “Here is an author with an edge.” But there would be problems with a pseudonym: cashing royalty checks; explaining to a publisher that I’m not hiding anything by using a fake name; being invited to the White House as Cole Black and only having identification for Pat Bertram. Ouch. Except for the last, they are simple problems after all. But then I got to wondering: if I did a book signing and people expected a man and were confronted with a woman, would they feel cheated?

In the end I decided to stick with my own name. It’s a good name for an author with enough hard consonants to sound authoritative. Besides, it has the whole androgynous “It’s Pat” thing going for it; I can be whoever I want.

7 responses to “To Pseudonymize or Not to Pseudonymize”

Cole Black? lolol! Funny, but pretty cool play on words, all in all. For me it will depend upon the genre I’m publishing. Sia McKye utilizes family names and really there are very few named Sia out there. Romance and mainstream. For my para normal stories, I have another name I’ll use, also from family names–God knows, we’ve got more than enough to go around.

Interesting and very true. I chose my “pseudonym” because of the way it sounds: hard and clipped. For a long time, some folks on gather.com didn’t realize I was a woman (including Mike, I think). That was the ultimate compliment for my writing.

The only change I made was to go back to my maiden name. Hubby didn’t mind and it is less common than my married name. I played with a bunch of different names, but always came back to the one I was born with. Maybe if I write in another genre someday I will come up with a pseudonym.

The point about cashing the checks is certainly valid. That’s one of the reasons I love Kindle and Createspace. I can set up the account in my real name, and then just use as many pseudonyms as I want for my writing.